Before the Law

David Theroux, in his introduction to Fresh Air Fiend, attempts to define what it means to be a stranger. On the second page he brings up the concepts of alienation and the anti-hero. I have always been especially interested in these archetypal characters, although Theroux has a few problems with them. He brings up Raskolnikov and Mersault, two of my heroes in literature. Raskolnikov at the end of Crime and Punishment ends is alienation and is vindicated through prison and religion. So he resolves into the mainstream, no longer an outsider. Albert Camus in his novels The Stranger and also A Happy Death (the less known precursor), develops the idea of the other in depth. The stranger is someone who does not know how to lie, he does not know how to buy into the samsara of life, therefore he feels alienated. The word alienation was primariy used by Karl Marx in reference to the industrial revolution and capitalism. It had a few different meanings for him including, alienation from what man creates, alienation from the act of creating, and alienation from his fellow man. One of my favorite Camus quotes of all time is, "lying is not only saying what is false, IT IS FAILING TO RECOGNIZE TRUTH". So he is a stranger in that he is one of the only people to recognize authenticity, everyone else is living under bad faith/absurdity. Theroux has a large problem with these characters because of their archetypal nature. He says that they seem to cookie cutter for his liking, a little too predictable. He is far more interested when you see some from within the fold become an outsider. This idea is mirrored in ancient greek tragedy, which required a tragic fall from grace. The fall had to be a high one for the moral/point of the story to be convinving. Likewise Theroux seems to enjoy that high fall, or as in Hamlet, "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow". I don't want to get too much into this, but the idea of what it means to be a stranger is an important one.

The other point that I enjoyed from Theroux that he only mentions briefly is deviancy. He writes, "What makes us human is our capacity for deviant behavior" (37). This is also phrased "I am a man because I err". Also in my Currents in American Lit. class today we were discussing Poe short stories and the idea that we are somehow all subconsciously attracted to lawbreaking. It seems, and this could be a huge leap, that there is something inherently, fundamentally wrong with any system of law in general, in that it is constant temptation to our human freedom (if in fact we are not determined or fated). Possibly this is evidence for the Hobbes or Lao Tzi perspective. That human beings need to be ruled with a heavy fist because we inherently dislike any sort of social obedience. The only reason we engage in this obedience at all is compramise. We HAVE to believe as fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, etc that we are getting out of the system more than we are putting in. Regardless of whether this is true or not, we have to BELIEVE that it is true. This is very important, or else the system itself will lose legitimacy. It may be as simple as the local tender at your favorite bar pretending to give you good deals all the time (but he's really not), and you pretend to be grateful that he is hooking you up. You both know that the reality of the situation is that there is an equal tradeoff, yet you get something else out of believing the illusion, prestige. The sense comes that you are somehow special, that you have risen above the multitude, so you allow the system to perpetuate itself. I don't know, this is enough meandering for the night.

Ignorance or Innocence?

Ahh, I have yet to purchase Sand in my Bra, because no one has it anymore up here. So I'm not sure what to write about in this thing. I guess I can talk about (what I think is) the general idea of the book, although a lot of it will be conjecture. I think that the two aspects of the book that popularized it are sex and humor. The title alone has sexual implications for non female readers, and the advertisements gracing the covers rely heavily on humor as a medium. I don't have any inherent problem with this matter, it is simply marketing at it's best. It sort of begs the question though, "does the Travel genre need this sprucing up". Does it need this little extra to make it appealing to people who normally wouldn't read in this area. I think the simple answer to that question is yes. Travels is pretty much standard stuff with a romantic lense arching over. It's like when people get up in class to do presentations and they simply talk about some family trip they had. Yeah that's great, but there has to be an (and) there. It has to be, "My trip to Cuba, and...something exciting", "My journey to Africa, and...my discovery of romantic love", etc. There has to be a sequel in that title, something intense. It's just like the titles of philosophy books. The average joe does not want to read a complex philosophical treatise, so it's always "Philosophy and The Matrix", or "Philosophy and Sex".

Also another interesting point that just occurred (sp?) to me is that romantic lense itself, it merits further attention. There was a point brought up recently in my cosmology class that "Fusion should never be mistaken for Integration". Fusion is the back to Eden idyll. It is the idea that when we are born into this edenic state, and all of our lives we are trying to regain that innocence (paradise) lost. The other approach is a more compound one, and it is called integration. These two words sound similar, but they have drastically different implications. Integration suggests that are has been a rupture that must be healed. Integration is also called the dialectical process. It means you start with unity(fusion), there is a duality split (suffering), and then the trinity (integration) of healing, which is really a tri-unity. Now many of these stories we are covering are guilty of the fusion approach, which has no crucible for conscious, no trial for integrity to be born. For a human being, experiencing no stress, can be just as bad as experiencing negative stress. Nature is not an idyllic garden, and man was not innocent at birth (he was ignorant, and there is a difference). Nature is a dialectical process that incorporates suffering, but then experiences a return to unity. It's sort of complex, and I've sort of exhausted the concept I think, adios for now.
nos vemos
Sean

"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night..."

I don't really have anything to write about, so I thought I might try a little projection into the future. This post will be a sort of continuation of the older "why we travel" post.

Why do humans enjoy traveling so much? Why do we usually have a stronger desire to travel in our youth (or at least most do)? Likewise, why do we feel the need to settle as we grow older? I've always felt a strong desire to "see the world" as it is commonly phrased, and then die in the place I was born. I think there is a strong psychological/behaviorial impetus for that. I believe it is a matter of egoism mostly. We have the desire, as Rory does, to plant our footprints all over the globe. It's some cheap form of ownership/immortality. We also wish to have a lot of experiences to tuck under our belts, we maybe feel they will help weigh in our favor at the end. I don't know, but I do know that I feel the desire as strongly as anybody else. I even love saying the word wanderlust, such a great word. There is song at the very beginning of the Hobbit by Mr. Tolkien that conveys a similar feeling. I wish I had the book in front of me so I could quote it, but basically Bilbo talks about how it all begins with a simple step. It's beautifully simplistic. Take a step out the door, begin down a path (any path, doesn't really matter) and just go. I felt this desire very strongly earlier this semester when I was swimming downriver on a sunny day. I was just playing in the current and having a grand old time by myself. There was a Great Blue Heron about a hundred feet from me. I kept trying to creep closer and closer to it but it kept taking off and flying an equal distance downstream. I ended up going much further downriver than I had initially intended. The thought occured to me then, "what if I were to not turn around?" I felt really liberated just thinking the thought. I mean it just felt happy to have that thought. Of course I eventually turned around and came back, and I am sitting here today writing in this blog. It's like a lifetime of socialization is this giant magnet that was just pulling me back. I wish that I could be a creator, a poet in Rorty's sense of the word. Someone who has the sac to just not turn around, to keep going. Some narcissistic, egoistic fool, so in love with his own legend that he is continually empowered by it. We promote individualism in our society, yet at the same time we shun the aesthete. We are scared by the passionate lovers who could give a damn for the law. There is a chapter in the book Days of War, Night of Love, a sort of propaganda for revolutionaries that is put out by crimethinc, called "Join the Resistance: Fall in Love". Here is the last paragraph and my favorite passage:

ah yeah, I just found out that you can't cut and paste in this dumb thing. So I'll try and find the link real quick.

http://www.crimethinc.com/library/english/join.html

If you have never read the book, it has some pretty interesting things in it. When I was in highschool, my parents were scared when I started reading it, because they knew it was sort of pro-anarchy. But I haven't blown up any buildings...yet. I might just have to form my own MonkeyWrench Gang someday though. Yeah I got nothing really, so have a goodnight.

A broken Mirror of Nature

Now I guess the question would be, how I can reconcile concepts from Rorty and Wilber, with what we are doing in our class to achieve some synthesis. Let us try and fuddle around with Stewart for a bit. Can we somehow examine his motivations for making his trip through a postmodern/holarchical lense? I would first say that the post modern paradigm is generally the paradigm of the young (or who were young at it's inception). Now I am probably making gross generalizations, but let's let it stand for a bit. Stewart would probably follow into the Rortian idea of some sort of ethical progress by creating an applied rule of pragma/kharma. Whereas if he were more under the sway of Wilber, he would be doing TM and pranayama somewhere. I'm not sure where I'm going with this right now, and it all feels like a weak premise. Maybe I should try and reimagine my angle. What about the way Rory speaks, what sort of vocabulary is he employing. Wilber, although not really interested in the linguistic-constructivist persepctive, would probably say that he has transcended the ethnocentric worldview to the worldcentric rung of the ladder. He would probably also add that Rory is at least a little unhinged/decentered in that he is now looking ahead to the next rung of the ladder, while trying not to lose his footing on the rung of the past. Does Rory himself ever bring up or discuss these ideas in any way? I think the answer is probably not, he is not much of a philosopher. While I guess if you could ascribe one particular school to him, it would probably be stoicism. He doesn't really fill the pages with emotion the way Stevenson did, which I suppose is good and bad. When Stevenson did it, it became nauseating after a short while. In Rory though, you get the sense that he is terribly guarded, and it would probably be a benefit to the story if he added more personal interior. However, it could just be that Stewart is not set up that way. Or to reimagine it post-modernly, he was simply never given the vocabulary to construct his self that way through his language. This all seems thin too, maybe I am trying to hard to reconcile them. Maybe it can't really be done in a neat, efficient way.

Maybe I should leave Rory, and try and find some generic travel principles that adhere to what I am trying to do. Hmm...maybe I can build a connection using novelty. Novelty for Rorty is the self creation of a new way of seeing the world. He is quick to argue that language itself is not a medium, like some other linguistic philosophers have stated. For him it's the actual context that we are located within, it's not simply a medium of expression, or an ability to represent the nature of reality correctly. I think I've got that right, but I'm still shaky on a lot of his ideas, so please no one take what I say too faithfully. Anyway the connection I am trying to build is that the traveler is the sibling of the poet, who is pursuing novelty in physicality. Granted I don't know how I could argue that they are constructing a new view of the cosmos, but there is at least somewhat of a parallel there. I don't know, I feel like I got nothing right now. Maybe I will try again later, if anything comes to me. Adios muchachos...

Rorty Vs. Wilber

I would like to expand upon this whole post-modern vs integrity debate that I mentioned a little on web ct. It's really consuming my entire life right now, which is great because I love when all my classes overlap in subject matter. So I guess it started with Lit. Crit. and Robin DeRosa. She taught me all about social constructionism, the panopticon, the lack of an intrinsic self hood, the ability of language to construct truth, etc. There are some brilliant ideas in post modern/ post structuralism, however there are aspects which are akin to the pathologies of our age. The other side of this debate was added from taking Dr. Haight's Cosmology class this semester, wherein we are reading the magnificent Ken Wilber. Haight is a holarchist, and the exact opposite of a post modern. His seems to be more the language of love, and his is a hopeful view of the future. Whereas post modernism seems very dreary at times, and has many connections to the existential realms. For awhile the Language of (w)holism was prevailing in my worldview, however the post moderns experienced a revival in a big way when the editor of our philosophy magazine asked me to research and publish a paper on Human Rights and Richard Rorty's "Ethics without Principles"/Antifoundationalism. I am taking three lit. classes this semester, plus the heavy cosmology reading, so that is a lot of books a week. On top of all that I am reading numerous books and articles by Rorty and other pragmatists. I also read Michael Ignatieff's book on Human Rights, to get the other side of the spectrum. I am proud to have done this though because I think that I will be creating a good, new ethical perspective. I really feel like maybe I can create a work that will help solve the issues of seccession vs. stable soverignty, and when (if ever) it is ok to invade a defaulting regime, like the difficulties right now in the middle east. As Rorty would define it, I am being poetic, because I am creating some new metaphoric language. I may even try for the Elie Wiesel (sp?) prize in Ethics, although I don't really imagine I can win it. I am also submiting my essay on ecofeminism for the Sally Boland Award, which is a little less exciting, but still cool.

I don't know where I stand with everything, it's really hard to define. On the one hand their is absolute truth, on the other their is relativity. Where do I fall? Rorty would argue against both of them. He would probably say that we have to stop using that outdated language to guide our inquiry. Maybe it's more important to ask how this is beneficial to achieving some fixed desired end. But Rorty's God is Chance and I don't know if I can deal with that. I have to believe that there is something Essential about Ek-sistence, some telos to the cosmos like Haight preaches. So we have Rorty and Wilber both battling it out. Two very formidable minds, and myself caught up in the great, unfolding drama. Maybe I can examine the two, and then try and forge my own path like the Buddha says. It used to be that we worried about the Cartesian Problem of Other Minds. Now we worry about the problem of other universes, so we've gone macro in a big way this century. I guess I should just state that there is a lot of pleasure for me in the inquiry, in the not-knowing. It's probably one of the great beauties in this life.

Hamlet, Tao, Mel Brooks

I had a lot of fun preparing for the presentation I did in class this past monday. Like I mentioned I have always had a strong interest in history, especially in that section of the world. I remember little things the teacher Petrigno used to do to help us learn better, and they were amazing. When we did the Ottoman conquest of Byzantium, he played the song "Istanbul was Constantinople" by They Might be Giants. Or when we learned about Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel he had us all take pen and paper and crawl under our desks, hold the paper up to the bottom of the desk, and draw anything for a whole class period. When it was over he asked us to imagine what that would feel like if we did it for almost a decade, or however long it was. Also the fact that he painted it with only like a few candles. He used Mel Brooks History of the World to teach us about the Inquisition, and a million other little things that it would take a while to mention. That class along with my philosophy class, and senior english were the only three classes I ever liked in highschool. Everything else was useless crap that I just didn't care about. That's why I failed so many classes in highschool and didn't get accepted to any colleges at first. I spent the majority of my time just hanging out in the courtyard playing guitar and doing handstands all the time. My philosophy class was probably the single most important class. We did a chronological survey of western philosophy, and then we through in a little Dao at the end. We also did an aesthetical/ethical debate looking at people like Mapplethorpe, which is pretty progressive for highschool. He was this pragmatic rock, and he taught me so much. Nothing fazed him ever, or at least it seemed. He never became involved in the politics of education, yet he was continually elected teacher of the year and other awards. The other class that I loved was senior English, and this is one of the reasons I became an English major. I didn't like the majority of what we did all year in the class, mainly Shakespeare stuff. But there came a time near the end of the year, when we started Hamlet, and that is when everything changed. Hamlet was probably the only thing I was ever forced to read in highschool that ever spoke to me. I was your typical tortured teen, and everything I read in those pages just resonated with me. I still remember many quotes that I used to put on notebooks and into my livejournal. "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow", "Oh that this too, too sullied flesh would melt", "One may smile and yet be a villain", and of the course the famed passage which contains The ultimate question. I don't know...Hamlet, the Tao, and Mel Brooks is what I remember from highschool.

Glimmer Shimmer Irridescece

So I feel like I can use this blog spot for a more intimate version of the events I record in my the webct discussion board. Since I just ranted and raved on that thing, I might as well continue it here. Hopefully I can take it deeper and find some fundamental reasons why I feel how I feel. First things first, let's look at Travel Literature. Travel literature seems elusive to me right now, I have done next to no reading in this genre in my life. After nearing completion of Kiwi Tracks, I have to say that my faith in Travel Literature is almost completely smashed. I pray that the subsequent text will be more inspiring. I guess that the root cause of this is that I AM a person of great feeling. I am not an arithmetical logical person; I am wild and at least partly insane. I think that I can learn more from listening to music in the sun than from most books. Kiwi Tracks hasn't made me feel at all. He hasn't filled me with compassion for the Maori, he hasn't made me quake at the majesty of the volcanoes. His political account towards the end becomes more and more divergent and boring. This feeling of genuine dis-ease is compounded by the fact that most of the literature in my other classes also is not good right now. Parallel to this book I was reading Native American creation in myth for Currents in American Lit and also Egyptian psalms for Ancient Lit. All of these seemed extremely uninteresting to me. I like reading about human nature, it’s why I read. I want to learn about myself when I read and the people around me. I seem like a rather bubbly person on the surface I suppose, but I also, to quote Shelley, "bear a hell within me which nothing can extinguish". I want to learn about the darkness of human nature, because the light is fairly transparent and easy. The light is what I am most of the time and what I show to the world around me. I want to learn about the void, the abyss, amorality, etc. My friend's father, who is a professional storyteller, told me one day that my ideas would get me into serious trouble someday. It was after I went on this crazy rant about the irrelevance of ascribing morality to warfare (mainly speaking of the Lebanon conflict), taking the Arjun Argument. The older I become the more I see how his words were probably true. So unless these travel books somehow incorporate the dark side of the moon, I will have a lot of difficulty performing well in this course; or taking anything REAL out of it for that matter. I feel like there is only one question that is even worth asking in this life, and it's the reason I study philosophy, "Why the world, instead of the Void"? How did something come out of nothing? How did a sound (tonic) break the infinity of silence? Or another way of phrasing it would be "to be, or not to be". I feel that most everything else is a superfluity and an irrelevance. Sartre once said, "I exist, and that is all". This short line exemplifies the importance he places on human freedom and responsibility by extension. So this is what fills my everyday, this is what I am thinking of as I watch sunsets. So to read accounts of the general politic of Maori culture doesn't have a lot of weight on me. I'll admit that there is a possibility of finding truth in the strangest places, and this is why I never strictly disclude any one genre, field, science, etc. Who knows, maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. I am fairly convinced that this Stevenson cat, never gave much thought to the very question that is central to my existence. The reason that I suppose this is because infinity has a way of shining through whatever attempts to contain it or conceal it; the best example of this would be in nature herself. There are definitely no sunbeams striating through his pages. I guess this can be the end of my strange rant for now.

Why we travel?

The book Places in Between by Rory Stewart is restoring my faith in the genre called "Travel". I was thinking to myself that we should have opened the course with this book, but then I realized that maybe I needed to have this book second. Possibly this book found me and not the other way around. This book was floating in the cosmos calling my name, and I came to it as it came to me. There was one section of the book where Rory just puts his head to the ground and treks it hard. I really enjoyed this section because it said something to me about human nature (actually a few things). The first being that nothingness can be achieved by any sort of harmonious action with our fellows or nature on this planet. Then the question arises as to why we desire this feeling so much? It could possibly be that we spend all of our days being stretched and squashed so much that we become amorphous blobs by absolution. Rory is tapping into the infinite in this scene because it's all that we can do. It's our only defense against indecision, unknowing, the unending rational strain of the question. The other point that it brings up in my mind is our desire to stay fluid, in flux. I believe that this physicality of our desire to constantly be transcending. If the universe is in fact "as above, so below" and our corporeal houses are a microcosm of the stars, then why not mirror the constant ascension of consciousness within our substance. So we stay moving, we stay seeking/searching. Searching for what? Avalon, a place that we knew before the Fall. One thing that I have become fairly convinced of is that Avalon cannot be located on any earthly plane. So Rory's (and others) venture becomes a pleasant diversion without any real metaphysical backing. The Kingdom of Heaven is inside us all. Mason Jennings has a lyric which says, "Now when I say I search for God, I mean I search for peace." In this case the word "peace" and the word God become metonomic. Which is a beautiful way of phrasing the entire thing I think; in eastern thought it is often called Nirvana (a state of eternal calm). Nirvana is non-locality, which is definately a much more plausible end than the Sugar-candy-mountain that is the occidental Heaven. So why do we travel? We're trying to locate this paradise that has always been within us, if we could simply open our eyes. Question two: if we understand that this place of peace exists within us, then why do we propagate suffering? Why do we feed off of it like vampyres? I don't know, and I wish I did. Doystoyevsky said "Suffering is the origin of Consciousness", but I want to believe he was wrong. Yes it's true that when I am suffering I do feel very alive, but I feel even more alive in those moments of Inspiration that are unbounded, nameless. I think another reason for the solitary trek is the feeling of autonomy that we have. Thoreau said that he went into the woods because he "wished to live deliberately". That says so much for me. It means that we have to govern our slightest action, to not even pour a bowl of cereal unconsciously. If we allow the great grey beast of routine to control, then our lives will soar by us. I had a teacher once who told me that "the key to happiness is the cultivation of wonder in everyday life". We travel outwards because we do not yet comprehend how to travel inwards.

Los gitanos

Long fingernails describe parabolic motions on a fret board. The last four arrpegiate violently, while the thumb annihilates the low E on the upstroke. The man playing doesn't seem to be aware that he is even holding an instrument, but the sound that pours forth is spiritual. His long black hair is shining, and his eyes are glowing with curiosity. He observes his fellows on the bus as they contribute to the grand concerto. He is wondering where the music will go next, trying to anticipate, but understanding that it isn't really necessary; the only thing that matters now is THAT it 'goes'. The rhythm coheres to his heartbeat and the rest of him feels erroneous, superfluous. I stomp my feet along with everyone else, but I still feel out of place. Spending a night with these people doesn't mean that I am an inch closer to comprehending them. I am still the occidental here, and an appropriate amount of hostility was considered due measure. The music though, the music, everything has been forgotten for the music. The girl dancing in the aisle is no less than angelic, a perfect melding of purity and seduction. It leaves me with a feeling of otherworldliness. She is dancing in a void; some far away dark something where I wish to be. Sweet oblivion follows her every movement, it leaves me wishing I knew the steps. She looks at me occasionally when she turns, and I can't describe what it is I see there. It is a mixture of love and pity, which I suppose is the creation of compassion. The music becomes more and more percussive as it spirals upwards towards the suma. The only thing necessary is transcendence, the operation of higher mind function. The driver is the only correlation I have to things solid and sane. I could approach him, go to him with queries, but something restrains me. I have crossed over into this Meta, and I want to keep spinning for awhile. I understand he wonders over my presence, as he should. I find myself unable to explain the situation entirely either. I guess the only way I could defend the inside to the outsider, would be beauty. There is something beautiful here, and there can be no doubts about relativity and absolutes. Here lies the beauty of family, culture, bonds so strong the crushing weight of cold-caring civilization cannot staunch the current. Their story will not be taught in most history books, but it will flow from their lips if anyone cares to ask. I find myself wishing I could erase twenty-one years of empirical experience; begin again as a tabula rasa in order to fill my pages with people and places like these. I hate to think that my brief voyage into the dark is a simple in-authenticity and my perspective remains shallow. Since I have not yet obtained the ability to regress to the womb, I can at least begin a change right now. I will hopefully be dancing on this earth for a good many more years, and because of last night I will no longer color my world with falsity.